UT – Indie Reader

Readers immediately find themselves in Utica, a port city smelling of “fish and hemp and wet wood,” as scholar-and-sorceress Bybiis carefully observes how this society produces and powers its magic. … In each section, the reader tags along with a sharp-eyed outsider—an anthropologist, a journalist, a politician—as they navigate a startling, beautiful, thoughtfully constructed society.

Ambassadors, politicians, capitalists, and journalists all know each other from years of working together (and against one another). Although they have individual lives and stories, even the exit or death of a specific person does little to disrupt the grander flow of long-term designs shaped by partially submerged power structures. In this sense, the story of UTCAN’S TALISMAN is not only complex but very real.